Neither Black Nor White: Intermarried Jews and Mischlinge during the Third Reich

Vocabulary

oPrivileged
Intermarriage: This classification was given to intermarried couples that
consisted of a Jewish wife and a Christian husband. This classification also
referred to intermarried couples which raised their children as Christian
(Aschheim 82).

oSimple
Intermarriage: This term referred to an intermarried couple with a Jewish
husband, or a couple who brought up their children in the Jewish faith
(Aschheim 82).

Herbert Goering, head of Germany’s
four-year economic plan, and Nikolaus Horthy coined the terms “simple” and
“privileged” intermarriages in December 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht
(Stoltzfus 102).

oLebensborn:
Literally “spring of life.” A program initiated by Heinrich Himmler on December
12, 1935; it was meant to create a pure race of Aryans by allowing German
officers to make children with pre-selected racially pure German women. Often,
in the name of Lebensborn, children from “unfit” families were kidnapped to be
“germanized” and raised by Nazis (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org).